New England Overland » XJ. winch bumper http://www.newenglandoverland.com Thu, 08 Dec 2011 02:27:12 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 Strengthening the front end of the Cherokee http://www.newenglandoverland.com/equipment-guide/strengthening-the-front-end-of-the-cherokee/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=strengthening-the-front-end-of-the-cherokee http://www.newenglandoverland.com/equipment-guide/strengthening-the-front-end-of-the-cherokee/#comments Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:14:50 +0000 admin http://www.expeditionchef.com/?p=23 Since I’ve decided to abandon my Range Rover as a platform for travel and stick with the Cherokee, I’m taking all opportunities to strengthen her up. Adding a winch to the front isn’t the easiest of things with the unibody Cherokee. Since there’s no frame, the only way to add one is on an aftermarket winch bumper. There are a few choices out there, I decided to go with an OR-Fab tube front winch bumper. The main reason being weight savings. The only other bumper I considered was an ARB, but it’s almost twice the weight.

First I removed all of the front clip:

And yes, there’s some stuff hanging down that’s going to be moved. Here you can see where my old tow hook brackets mounted. One tug and they bent:

While I was taking care of this, I decided to add a additional transmission cooler to the system. With our travel plans for the future, and the addition of a trailer, it made sense. I mounted it in front of the condenser, towards the side where the mechanical fan is:

Here you can see where I plumbed it into the return line to the transmission:

Continued in part 2..

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